text: I would say that "welcomingness" is more a product of size than selectivity.  At a small liberal arts college you'll have more individual contact with your professors that at an ivy league school or similar university, but you'd have even less at a big state school.  I go to a small liberal arts school, and I can tell you that I've only been there a semester and a half and I think at least eleven professors know my name (my mom says she graduated from a state school without a single prof knowing her name) and in the big required freshman intro class that everyone takes after every paper we turn in we meet one-on-one with our prof to discuss the paper.  From what I've heard, I think that at bigger schools (ivies and similar) you can certainly get to know your professors if you try, but you have to go out of your way to make that happen.  \n\nAnother thing to think about is emphasis on teaching vs. research.  My school is very focused on teaching, and pretty much all our profs like to teach and want to get to know us.  And we don't have a graduate school, so we're not competing with grad students for our professors' time (the grad students tend to win).  There certainly is plenty of research and such that goes on, but I haven't encountered any profs who are more concerned about their research than their classes.